Over the last few months, we’ve all been agonising over how the Porsche 911 has had to go all-turbocharged to keep ahead of emissions regs.

And now it’s the Boxster’s turn. Gone are the comfortably big naturally aspirated six-pot engines, to be replaced for the sake of efficiency by 2.0 and 2.5-litre four-bangers.

A 2.0-litre Boxster? Seriously? Believe it. But when you hear that those four cylinders put out 296bhp, well, that’s when believing it might actually be possible.

Better still, the 2.5 in the Boxster S driven here is worth 345bhp.

By ‘driven,’ however, we mean by someone else. Porsche would only let us ride shotgun, which is a bit of a bore, but he who makes the cars makes the rules.

So what we can tell you is this. It still sounds nice, with that distinctive boxer jangle – but if you were hoping for it to replicate the visceral yawp of the old six-pots you’re going to be disappointed.

You won’t, however, be disappointed in any way by what happens when you put your foot down. Smaller engines or not, the entry-level model is faster than the previous-generation S – and as for the new S, that polishes off the 0-62 sprint in a hugely creditable 4.2 seconds. And, certainly from the passenger’s seat, the experience absolutely bears those figures out.

Much of that is down to the huge increase in torque available from lower in the rev range – for which the arrival of turbocharging is to be thanked.

Handling-wise, it’s a pass for now. Some things, we really will not stoop to commenting on without discovering them for ourselves.